


The Kids Table

by stitchy



Series: Keeping it in the Family [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Coming Out, Derry's weird Memory Stituation, Eddie Lives don't even trip, Family Drama, Fluff, Growing Up, Humor, M/M, Muppets as Motif, POV Richie Tozier, Thanksgiving, Underage Drinking, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-11-26 00:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20920802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: For the most part Richie and his sister have a doctrine of mutually assured destruction. They couldobliterateeach other with their parents given the slightest provocation. To keep things at an even keel, they steer clear of each other as much as possible every other day of the year, but on Thanksgiving? Kids Table is like their NATO.A series of Tozier Thanksgivings, from '85 to '19.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to everyone who couldn't get enough of Richie self-soothing by hanging out in the bathtub in Missing The Boat ;)

-1985-

Richie is still awake when the thin sliver of light between the floor and the door of his sister’s room dims for the night. Since he’s camped out on the furry rug beside her bed, he has a better angle than usual of his parent’s feet as they go down the hall, first his father pausing customarily at the door, then his mother still in heels, and then the less familiar plod of Uncle Gerry as he goes to lay claim to Richie’s room for the evening. He’s young enough that the novelty of getting to use a sleeping bag indoors outweighs the indignation of having someone else in his territory without him, but only just. Before Thanksgiving company arrived, he’d already hidden his shoebox of secret treasures deeper into the closet and rounded up any stuffed animals that he felt would be uncomfortable around a stranger. Most of them could tough it out on the uppermost shelf over his bureau, but Fozzie came along for the visit to Bridget’s room.

The pom-pom trimmed dust ruffle on her bed makes for a perfect stage curtain as Fozzie finetunes a gag.

“Turkey is traditional, but why not serve teddy bears for Thanksgiving? They are already stuffed!” whispers Richie, twitching his fingers in the back of Fozzie’s head to make his ears wiggle. “Wokka wokka!”

Bridget rolls over, scowling. “Shhhh.”

“_You _ shhh, this is his act!”

“This is _ my _ room! Go to sleep!”

“I can’t! It smells in here like you farted after eating the whole Cabbage Patch!” Richie kicks his feet at a pyramid of the creepy dolls, staring down at him.

“I can’t sleep if you don’t sleep, Richie!”

“M’not gonna sleep,” he hisses back. “I’m gonna stay up and I’m gonna get to breakfast first before anybody else, and I’m gonna have the rest of the apple pie all to myself.” And no one and nothing, not God or Uncle Gerry’s notorious sweet tooth can stop him!

Bridget sighs. She’s only two years older than him, but when she sighs it sounds like an adult. “I am still sorta hungry...”

Before Richie knows what’s happening, Bridget dangles her feet out of bed and lands on the edge of his sleeping bag, making it pull tight around him.

_ What the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks_\- “Hey!”

Her polished finger flies to her lips. “Shhh, don’t wake them up!”

“Wuh?”

Bridget toes him in the ribs then hops over him entirely. “Get up, we’re gonna go eat that pie before Uncle Gerry.”

Without another word, Richie hurriedly unzips his sleeping bag enough to slither out, grabs his glasses, and posts Fozzie at his pillow to keep a lookout. He follows Bridget out of her room and down the hall, stepping on the same un-creaky floorboards as she does, to the kitchen. She sends him to get forks while she quietly opens the fridge and unstacks several tupperwares to free the pie. In the light of the refrigerator, Bridget motions for them not to go back the way they came, but towards the bathroom instead.

_ Why_? Richie mouths at her.  
  
_ Wash up quieter! _

That’s a good point. Bridget is always smart, he knows grudgingly.

When the bathroom door is carefully shut behind them, they each climb into an end of the tub, raise their forks victoriously, and dig in.

-1989-

Richie is feeling actually, genuinely grateful for once. Even though eighth grade majorly sucks. Even though Bev moved away, and Stan is still grounded, and Eddie went to Vermont to see his grandparents for the holiday, as usual. They’re all alive, and badass as hell, and he’s planning to ride that high at least until he gets his grades back at the end of the semester. When his mother asks what he’s been thankful for this year, he proudly declares “My friends,” without a trace of irony.

The positive atmosphere continues on that night, when Bridget nudges open his bedroom door and pokes in her hand, beckoning with one finger. “Psst! Kids Table after-party, let’s go!”

For the most part they have a doctrine of mutually assured destruction these days. They could obliterate each other with their parents given the slightest provocation. Richie knows Bridget smokes pot out her window in the middle of the night, because she caught him shimmying down the drainpipe to sneak off after curfew, and so on. To keep things at an even keel, they steer clear of each other as much as possible every other day of the year, but on Thanksgiving? Kids Table is like their NATO.

Richie throws off his covers and trails along after his sister. Instead of heading to the kitchen for their now traditional refrigerator raid, Bridget stops short at the bathroom. “After you,” she says, sweeping her arm in a magnanimous invitation. “They kept opening ‘em and forgetting ‘em all over the house...”

Within, clustered beside the bathtub are no less than seven pilfered cans of beer.

“Ah say, Ah am shocked and appalled, Ah am. Corrupting a youngin’ like mahself!” Richie gasps.

“Oh shuttup.” Bridget pushes him into the bathroom and closes the door behind them before pressing a can into his hands.

Richie gapes at her. “Uhh, Bridge?”

“Is this baby’s first beer? Aww, Ridge!” She ruffles his hair with the matching nickname. “I’ll just get my polaroid-”

“Shhh! No!” The last thing he needs is photographic evidence of rule breaking floating around the house. It’s hard enough keeping his other secrets under wraps. Mom is always snooping around these days and wondering about his personal life out loud. She can tell something big happened to him over the summer, but in the absence of any data has decided he has ‘a little girlfriend’.

“Relax, sheesh!” Bridget lowers herself into the far end of the bathtub and selects two half-drunk cans to combine. She shakes loose the last few drops and then puts it aside for a third. “Judging by the number of cans that were _ already _ empty, I don’t think we have ever needed to be that quiet for this.”

Richie steps into the other end of the tub. “Move over, buttmunch!”

-1990-

After dinner, Richie and Bridget form a bucket brigade between the remains of the feast on the table and their mother at the sink. Richie piles each plate with its utensils, Bridget scrapes off the scraps into the trash, and Mom dunks them in a soapy bath.

“You going out tonight, Bridget?” Mom asks.

“That depends, can I have the car?”

Mom blasts a stubborn plate with the sink hose. “Won’t Liam pick you up?”

“They’re fighting,” Richie sneers. “Can’t believe you didn’t hear her screeching at him on the phone.”

Bridget tugs the next plate away from him roughly. “I _ was _ going to see a movie and take my darlingest, babyest little brother with me, but if you’d rather stick around here and gossip about my breakup with Mom...”

So she _ hadn’t _ got her license and a boyfriend and supermarket-job money and forgotten all about their annual sibling bonding appointment after all.

“Woah, hey hold the phone! How much bourbon was in that ham glaze, Ma? I think we’re all saying things we don’t mean!” Richie laughs nervously. He hurries to gather up the last few bowls and serving spoons and dumps them directly into the sink, bypassing a smirking Bridget.

A few minutes later they’re climbing into the sedan, bundled in at least three layers a piece. Richie watches his breath fog up the windshield while Bridget defrosts the car. He can see the old smear of finger in the glass.

_ B + L _

He thinks of how mortified he’d be to have Bridget see something like that and tries to wipe it with his elbow casually, as though he’s simply attempting improve visibility faster. Bridget catches his eye and he can’t help but look guilty.

“Sorry Liam bailed on ya, Bridge.”

She just sighs her already-adult sigh. “Never date a boy who only asked you out because he got turned down by your friend first, Richie.”

Whether it's the unwittingly well worded advice or the temperature that’s frozen his guts, Richie doesn’t know, but he could shit ice cubes. Sometimes he thinks she knows. He’s too chicken to have said or done anything she might have noticed, but Bridget never dogpiles him when Mom teases about girls or tries to set him up with friends from school, even though he knows there have been a few awkward crushes. It’s probably just because she (very loudly) thinks he’s a total dweeb 364 days out of the year, but still.

Richie raises his hand, Scout’s honor. “No problem there, I will never date a boy, period.”

Not at this rate.

-1991-

“So, what about Eddie?”

Richie stops kicking his feet over the edge of the tub. “What about him?”

Bridget bugs her eyes out at the plate of pie as if that’s self explanatory. It’s very tasty homemade pecan pie that Eddie brought over for dessert tonight, but seeing as Bridget is eating it while sitting on the closed toilet, it seems blasphemous to invoke his name.

“Has he got a girlfriend?”

“No. I don’t know,” Richie says coolly. As if he has any blind spots in Eddie’s social calendar between all the stretches of dedicated Richie Time. Preposterous.

Bridget forks a stray pecan with a shrug. “Mom and Dad already like him. And he’s kinda hot.”

And he’s _ Richie’s_. Eventually. Maybe.

Richie contemplates his slice of pie like it’s a literary device in English class. Allusion: ‘_The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach_’. Irony: Eddie is supposedly allergic to nuts. Metaphor: That which is offered is ultimately forbidden.

Thank fuck Bridget isn’t a telepath. Richie shovels another bite into his mouth. “Yuck,” he chews. “You’re a senior and he’s a sophomore.”

Bridget raises an eyebrow. “So? Lots of senior guys date underclass girls. Other way around is just feminism.”

Richie resumes kicking his feet in what he hopes is a nonchalant jig rather than the frantic paddling of an aquaphobe in the deep end. “Move over, Sally Ride, there’s a new she-hero blasting into orbit over here.”

“That’s a bullshit excuse is all.”

Cornered, Richie falls back on his primary mode of defense. “Well you can’t fucking date Eddie. The Yo’ Momma jokes are already bad enough.” And they’re for deflecting your Big Gay Feelings, of course. Not an invitation to actually fuck a family member. “And besides! You’re way outta his league. He’s a little dentist’s-office-smelling pipsqueak narc and you’re-”

“Omigosh,” Bridget gasps, hand to mouth like a cartoon. “You think I’m_ cool!” _

“I didn’t say-” Primary tactics failing him, Richie switches to retreat. He scrambles to his feet and swipes Bridget’s plate before she’s finished it. “Yoink!”

“You’re right,” Bridget sighs as he leaves. “If I dated a boy who made pie that good all the time, I’d never fit into my prom dress.”

  
  
-1992-

“It’s weird,” says Bridget. “I don’t know, maybe I’ve been studying too hard or whatever, but if Uncle Gerry hadn’t picked me up from school on his way here, I think I would have forgot to come home. Like home never-" she dismisses what must be a strange thought. "Well. _ I’m here_,” she decides. “Glug glug!”

She sits alone in the tub this time while Richie lounges against the hamper. With his legs, they haven't been able to properly share the tub in years, and since it’s her first visit home from college, Richie is being generous.

Plus, he missed her. _ Well_. He doesn’t miss _ her_, specifically, so much as he misses having someone else to take half of the attention that he now has to shoulder alone. He misses the co-workers-in-a-sitcom-like solidarity they had, rolling their eyes at the business of being a Tozier. He misses not being sure if it’s _ RIIIIIICH _ or _ BRIIIIIDGE _ being hollered from two rooms away. Everything’s always his fault, these days. Their parents notice him more, now- precisely when he’s reached the peak of teenage crisis and most wishes he could slink by unobserved. Without Bridget, his every mood is scrutinized and questioned. They ask where he’s going, who he’s going with. Why don’t they come over here sometimes, or was the Nintendo a waste of money?

He can’t strategically wait for Bridget to parade out of her room in a parentally alarming amount of makeup and vanish in the poof of her hairspray, and he can’t say _ To dick around on the traintracks, _ and _ With Eddie, _ and _ Because I am buttcrazy in love with him and hoping one of these days he’ll jump my bones and that is never gonna happen over a game of Duck Hunt while Mom is clipping coupons on the sofa! _

Everything he does he catches flak. First he's “not serious about anything” but then if he buries himself in his writing or Drama Club, he’s so zonked out by dinner time that his father starts worrying that he’s depressed. If he goofs off with his friends and yucks it up to show that he’s not, Mom gets on his case about extracurriculars for college. _ If _ he’s even going to college. He’s just trying to survive the second half of highschool- then _ sayonara_, Derry!

Bridget passes Richie the bottle of vodka that she brought home with her. He takes a burning swig.

“You’re better than me, Bridge. Going off and doing some cool ass shit. When I’m out of here I won’t have a slick new degree in robots-“

“_Computer Science_-“

“-to excuse the fact that I don’t ever wanna come back.”

Bridget laughs. “Course not. You’ll have your boatload of money for that.”

When Richie passes the bottle back he looks at her like she’s crazy. “You’re more wasted than I thought.”

“I’m serious Richie. I’ve been out there now. It’s all-” she waves a hand, trying to summon a thought through her inebriation. “Cult of Personality. People love an underdog, and you’re funnier than any other dumb dog out there and you always land on your feet.”

“That’s _ cats_.”

Holding the vodka like a microphone, Bridget starts humming the _ Mary Tyler Moore Show _ theme.

“Uhn uh. Nope.” Richie smothers his hands in her face, but she sings through his fingers.

“Love is all arooound, no need to waste it! You can have the tooown, why don't you take it?”

“Cram it,” he shushes her. Is this what it’s like to be a Not Richie when he’s in full Trashmouth mode?

Undeterred by threat of strangulation, Bridget belts the rest. “-You're gonna make it after aaaaall!”

“Aghh!”

The knock of fatherly knuckles on the door. “_What on earth is going on in there_?”

Richie hollers, “I’m drowning Bridget!”

Before Dad opens the door she shoves the vodka up the back of her sweater.  
  
“Will you knock it off? Uncle Gerry is sleeping!”

“Sorry Dad.” Bridget contorts her face in a way that makes her drunken sheen look like indigestion. “The turkey isn’t sitting right with me. You probably undercooked it.”

Okay, maybe he does miss Bridget specifically.

  
  
-1993- 

It’s not like she promised or anything, but Bridget doesn’t come home for Thanksgiving the next year. Is this what it'll be like from here on out, when all his friends peel off and leave town? On the other hand, _he's_ not planning on coming back to Derry much, so who can blame her, really.

After dinner and a few hours of wine and watching the news his parents shuffle off to bed and Richie doesn’t know what to do with himself. It's too cold to bear the thought of meeting up with Stan and Mike, the only people also in town at the moment. He wanders back and forth from his room to the den a few times before deciding where to park. He watches most of an episode of M*A*S*H before losing interest, sits in the bathtub with the amaretto Mom likes to drizzle on ice cream, then finds himself wandering into Bridget’s room, half expecting her to shout at him to fuck off.

_ The dust ruffle is gone_, Richie thinks ludicrously, as he sits on the rug by the nightstand. He flips on the lamp between one of those Grow-A-Dino things in a Snapple bottle full of water and a stack of VHS boxes emblazoned with the face of Tom Cruise. His sleepy, slightly tipsy hand knocks a pair of headphones off a jewelry hook in the process. Eh, what the hell? He untangles them enough to put on, then feels around at the bottom of the nightstand for the stereo until he finds the play button. It turns out Bridget left off in the middle of track he’s heard a thousand times, thrumming through the wall between their rooms.

_ Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable_  
_And lightness has a call that's hard to hear_  
_I wrap my fear around me like a blanket_  
_I sailed my ship of safety 'til I sank it  
_ _I'm crawling on your shores_

He should be copying out flashcards from Stan’s physics notes to really complete the scene, but it’s like hitting rewind on the past year. Bridget is next door, with her expensive candles Dad says will burn the house down and her funky Eurythmics posters and chick rock that Richie likes more than he’d openly admit. The Go-Gos _ did _ got the beat, all right?

Until the tape ends, Richie pokes around the junk on Bridget’s bookcase and visits with the yarn-maned unicorn that lives there, being sure to return it in as well groomed a condition as he found it. He notes that while she left behind most of her polaroids of camp friends and prom stuck to a miniature locker, the play-doh magnet he made for her 9th birthday is gone, along with a memorable picture of the family at the beach in Bar Harbor. She must have brought it with her to college.

“What’s your damage, Tozier?” Richie sniffs.

He wishes he could forget what it feels like to be this lonely.

  
  
-2000-

A few years in a row, Richie makes it home to Derry only for holidays that come with compensatory envelopes of cash, ie: not Thanksgiving. Bridget is usually abroad in the run up to Christmas anyway, working on last minute de-bugging for some launch in Japan or other. The way Richie (who never got much farther than Mavis Beacon) imagines it, she single handedly saved the world from Y2K, typing at lighting speed with tattooed knuckles reading CODE GIRL. Anyway, it must pay- because eventually Richie finds himself persuaded to drive up to Connecticut from New York where she and her husband Matt have bought a house on the water. The traffic is terrible, but he’s not hauling all the way to Maine, at least.

While giving the grand tour, Matt makes a big fucking deal out of the His and Her sinks in the bathroom about which Richie, who hasn’t seen his mother since his father’s funeral, just cannot summon a fuck to give. It’s maybe the fourth time he’s met the guy, but Matt’s always rubbed him the wrong way and his new found obsession with ceramic troughs is not helping.

Mom clings to Richie’s arm in the bathroom doorway and smiles and nods politely, but he can feel the countdown to a cocktail being squeezed into his elbow.

“-and of course then all of Bri’s crap-” Matt keeps calling Bridget ‘Bri’ and it’s making Richie feel like he’s on a prank show. “-and I can’t find any of my shaving kit, so I keep grabbing her Satin Care!”

“No doubt, no doubt,” Richie nods, not really listening and praying for an end to this torment.

“But you don’t know about that, right, Rich?” says Matt, just elated to be getting feedback. “You gay guys can just use the same stuff. His and His!”

It’s like a nuclear containment door drops in Richie’s brain, cutting off the rest of his body. He can’t feel his tongue, his arms, or Mom, or much else except for the cold fusion in his stomach. It seeps up his throat. Breach is imminent.

“I don’t live- I don’t. I have a roommate,” he says lamely. Which he already established half an hour ago when he showed up in an obviously borrowed car.

“Whatever you wanna call it,” shrugs Matt.

“I call it living in fucking Brooklyn,” he grits. Mom, bless her, still tuts at his language. As soon as Richie gets control of his limbs again he pries her off without making eye contact. “Now, if you don’t _ mind_, can I use the bathroom, already?”

Unaware of the bomb he’s just fumbled into Richie’s lap, Matt slaps him on the shoulder and slides past him to exit. “Sure, buddy.”

Someone else shuts the door and then in an instant Richie is bent over the His sink, retching the two Dr. Peppers he swilled down on I-95. Lucky for Matt’s new plumbing, it’s not as bad as if they’d sat down to eat already, but Richie shakes so hard his glasses clatter into the sink, too. _ Fuck fuck fuckitty. _

How he’s going to stomach so much as a crumb of stuffing after this is anyone’s guess. 

_ Did Matt guess? Or did Bridget tell him_? Of course, she would have had to guess too. Everyone knows he’s terminally single- that’s hardly classified- but he’s never told anyone whose pants he wasn’t actively trying to get into the rest of it. Pants-wise or heart-wise, there wasn’t anyone worth taking that leap, so he definitely never directly told Bridget. He’s never told his roommate, who is 100% just a roommate, and he certainly hasn’t told his _ recently fucking widowed mother_, thanks so much Matt!!

“Ridge?” The door creaks open a few inches.

Richie shakes excess water off of his rinsed glasses at the door like holy water against a vampire, but Bridget is already pushing in. “Fuck off, I’m taking a shit!” he snarls. “Or is that something personal that you also feel like you’re entitled to barge in on?!”

Bridget shuts the door behind herself. “I can hear you puking, asshole.”

“Oh, so you _ can _ hear the things I say?! Ever hear me say, ‘Gee, Bridget, I’d really fucking love it if you and Matt told people I was gay?!”

When he shoves his wet glasses back on so she doesn't look like a brown smudge anymore, Bridget looks rightfully miserable.

“I- I wasn’t sure about it,” she stammers. “Matt might’ve assumed when I said you never had any girlfriends? I don’t know why he’d bring it up. Did he say something in front-”

Richie pulls one of Bridget’s monogrammed towels off the rack and groans into it. “-in front of Mom, _ yeah_.”

A hand lands on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. That’s- Matt doesn’t always think. But I... probably shouldn’t have said anything either.”

Richie balls the towel up in his arms and sits on the edge of the tub. “No you shouldn’t.”

“Sorry.” Bridget sighs and sits cross legged on the floor in front of him. She fusses, tucking and untucking the flares of her jeans around her ankles a few times until she settles down. “This is a real scream, we should do this again next year, huh?”

Richie just glares at her.

“So, you are gay, then?” Briget smiles at him hopefully. “That’s all right, dude.”

Richie’s starving from his roadtrip, his de-puked glasses are dripping water down his nose, and he’s in fucking _ Connecticut _of all places. It does not feel very all right.

“My first crush was Kermit the frog,” he admits. It’s odd, but he can’t think of what or who else might have tipped them off. Their childhood is kind of a blur.

  
  
-2001- 

They do not do it again next year.

Richie’s moved out to LA by then, and while his flat broke ass might have swung a Greyhound bus ticket from New York, he (fortunately or unfortunately) can not afford the privilege of flying crosscountry for an encore to last year’s fiasco. Even if Mom or Bridget had offered to pay, he’s not up for planes right now. Most people aren’t.

He roams the aisles of Rite Aid desperate for an impulse item to pair with roach traps that doesn’t tell a grim story when he gets to the register. Can’t be food. Can’t be more cleaning supplies, or else he and the cashier will be in competition for who has the most depressing evening ahead of them. He settles on some deeply discounted Halloween clutter; a plastic door knocker shaped like a devil that flashes its red eyes and cackles when touched. He puts it on the refrigerator when he gets back to his apartment.

About a week later he gets a card in the mail from The Postons, which takes him a little too long to register as familiar. Inside is one of those generically festive holiday cards and a picture of Bridget, Matt, and baby Simon.

_ Dear Richie,_  
_We love you_  
HAPPY HOLIDAYS   
_Hope to see you there!  
__Love, Bridget , Matt, and Simon_

There’s a weird space and a change in ink where Matt’s name is signed in Bridget’s handwriting, as though she’d given him the opportunity to contribute but he didn't and she eventually relented.

Richie tosses the card but sticks the picture into the door knocker.

_ aH HhAHhahHH hAHAhahH! _

  
  
-2006- 

Things have started to pick up, and it’s less a matter of _ Would Richie Like to Go Home For the Holidays? _ and more along the lines of _ Comedy Isn’t A 9-5 Job, So Actually [Fart Noise]_. Whatever the given value of ‘home’ is, anyway. Mom lives in North Carolina now, because apparently just getting the dregs of every hurricane that comes up the Eastern seaboard wasn’t enough for her. He can’t imagine ever feeling like Myrtle Beach is home, or Bridget’s in Connecticut, either. And Derry is just a house painted the wrong color with somebody else’s name on the mailbox now, so unless he’s spacing on an illegitimate love child with his nonexistent high school sweetheart, there’s nothing tying him there anymore. _ You Can’t Go Home Again_, so Richie doesn’t.

Not that he invites anyone out to LA, either!

He wastes most of Thanksgiving day online, flipping back and forth between The Pirate Bay and YouTube like an animal pacing its cage in a cut rate zoo, bored and probably fighting a head cold. He’s got some _ A Bit of Frye & Laurie _ downloading that he can’t track down in hardcopy for his accidental shrine to perfect double acts. There’s the classics, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Burns and Allen, Vance and Ball, etc, a healthy dose of people out of Second City, and of course, the holy grail of Henson and Oz.

_ “Good grief, the comedian’s a bear!” _

_ “No he’s-a not! He’s-a wearing a neck-a-tie!” _

Richie used to bully people into memorizing the straight man bits of his favorite routines. When he thinks about why he doesn’t try working with a partner now, he can’t ever imagine who would fit. It makes him miss... well he’s not really sure who. But things are going fine with his act now. He’s getting steady work on the college circuit, and all that. His manager even sweet talked him into making a Facebook, hoping that an online presence would keep those kinds of gigs rolling in.

Richie checks it, between his fifty-fourth and fifth-fifth loops of _ Shoes_.

There’s a few ignorable messages, and a bunch of requests to tag him in photos from a show. He autopilots through them mostly, until he hits one that’s saturated red like an old polaroid, rather than his washed out face and black stage curtains.

_ Bridget Poston would like to tag you in a picture. _

Huh. He probably should have assumed she was banging around on Facebook already, since she’s always been an early-adopter when it came to technology. Maybe he had searched for her before, but he was in business mode when he made his account, and hadn’t realized she kept the Poston name after her divorce. Probably she wants to match Simon, he thinks, hastily approving the tag and accepting her friend request before he returns to the picture.

The first thing he notices is that he's shorter than Bridget. He hasn’t been shorter than his sister in twenty years. They’re standing on the porch by a decorative hay bale and a few pumpkins, one of which is smashed at little Richie’s feet, and that son of a bitch is _ not _sorry. Bridget’s got on a construction paper pilgrim hat with a tinfoil buckle, and Richie’s sporting one of those fringed ‘leather’ vests they used to make in elementary school by chopping up a brown grocery bag.

Although Richie plumbs the depths of Bridget’s many photo albums, there aren’t any more polaroids. They’re probably a hassle to scan, but if he butters her up with a few comments on pictures of Simon picking apples, maybe she won’t mind.

  
  
-2007-

“I don’t know why I wore white,” says Bridget, furiously scrubbing hand soap into her sweater. A bright red splotch of cranberry sauce refuses to budge.

Richie leans in the door frame. “Yeah, the jig is up. You’re not a virgin, you have a child.”

“You stole that from _ Sex and the City_.”

“It’s only stealing if I say it on stage. But hey, speaking of which. You get a load of Mr. Big in there?” Richie thumbs over his shoulder toward Mom’s dining room, where their new stepfather looks like he’s ready to merge a few financial empires, going by his suit.

“Right?! What number Mrs. Robert Rothington do you think Mom is? At least the fourth?”

Richie raises an eyebrow. “Should we even bother sucking up for the inheritance, or...?”

“Pfft, _ you _ can try.” Bridget gives up on her sweater. “I don’t need money that bad. Or at all, actually.”

“Yeah, wiz kid. Just buy yourself a new fucking sweater.” Richie pokes the sodden stain and then flicks Bridget’s nose. “Made ya look!”

“I can’t believe people pay to laugh at you,” she says, catching his finger. She pulls his hand up over his head and starts twirling him on the spot. There’s not really room for it in the bathroom, but bumping around is kind of the point.

“Sorry if you get recognized because of me, or whatever,” says Richie, already getting a bit dizzy. They’d already been drinking when the cranberry sauce went flying. It was highly necessary, considering what a stiff their host turned out to be.

“God forbid,” Bridget snorts. “That’s why I kept Matt’s name. Couldn’t run that risk!”

Richie stops spinning and grapples with the wall until his head catches up. “Aww, Bridge! You believe in me!”

Bridget grins. “I believe in your ability to forever associate the Tozier name with dick jokes, yes.”

“Still!”

In the other room, someone switches on the stereo to some Ella Fitzgerald, perfect for after-dinner relaxing and digesting. It sounds like the social obligation to the group portion of the evening is winding down, and although they don’t need to sneak their liquor anymore-

“I’m going in, Bridge,” Richie says seriously, squaring himself like a soldier. “I gotta get us the rest of that box wine. I don’t know what I’ll be facing in there. Could be some fossilized fondling. Some geriatric gyrating. Gray-haired groping. Geezer grinding!”

Bridget absolutely loses it laughing and smacks her forehead like she could reboot her brain to a save state before hearing those words with a hard enough blow. “Mind bleach! Mind bleach!” she cries.

Richie clasps her shoulder and looks at his sister gravely. “If I don’t make it back in five minutes, tell my barista... I loved her.”

“You’re so brave.”

Flipping a salute, Richie turns and leaves the bathroom, then walks as unobtrusively as possible down the hallway past the living room where the music plays. So that he doesn’t accidentally get sucked into socializing, he scopes it only out of the corner of his eye. What he sees surprises him.

They’re dancing. Just... super proper, clasped hands, arm around the waist and shoulder swaying along to the tune. It makes Richie feel a little funny when he realizes he never saw Mom and Dad like that. It’s confusingly sweet in a way he’ll need some time to process.

In the kitchen he grabs the wine, two fresh glasses, and a tea towel he bought Mom that says Gobble Til You Wobble, then dashes past the living room again, unnoticed.

“Rock Paper Scissors for the tub,” says Richie, laying the tea towel on the toilet like a fine tablecloth. Once the bar is set up, he throws rock.

“You always throw rocks!”

“Because you always fucking throw scissors!” Richie climbs into the tub immediately before getting himself a glass, just in case Bridget gets any funny ideas about sliding into base first.

Being a single mom must have re-wired her, because she still pours him a glass despite his immaturity. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” he clinks. “Hey Bridge?”

“Yeah Ridge?”

The words aren’t out of his mouth yet and he’s already regretting bringing this up, but what the hell- “Were Mom and Dad, ya know. Happy?”

Sipping her wine, Bridget takes a moment to absorb the question. “Sure. I couldn’t fake three years, nevermind thirty. They got along. Always had someone to talk to. They weren't lonely- and really? That was the worst. After Dad.”

“Yeah.”

Richie suspects they got a lot of the same kind of phone calls. When he first moved out to LA he would forget the time difference and let Mom gab at him for over an hour while he scrubbed out his bathtub or whatever (he always strangely enjoyed the smell of Clorox), then realize she had called him out of the blue at 2 AM her time. The worst part was, even when he realized it, he didn’t send her to bed. That was when he had started living alone, too, and he kind of missed having company.

“It’s good she got back out there,” Bridget decides aloud.

Richie nudges her. “If it's so great, then why don’t you do it?”

“Uh, hello? I have a six year old?”

“Yeah, I’ve met him, his theories on LOST are weak as shit. You need someone who can follow a plot.”

It’s a bummer Simon is with his dad for the holiday so that Bridget can have him at Christmas, which Richie can’t make this year. He has a _ really _ good Christmas present planned.

Bridget puts down her glass of wine and lays her arms along the edge of the tub, chin on her folded hands. “What about yooou?” she asks in a simpering voice. “You find anyone who can follow a plot yet?"

Richie shuts the showercurtain on her and starts draining his glass.

“Aw c’mon.” She drags it back open. “Nobody wants a piece of your limelight, lover boy?”

“Ughh.”

There’s always people that want sex and access from someone they’ve decided is famous- though the internet has certainly diluted the meaning of the word. Truth be told, Bridget is raking in bigger bucks and rubbing more powerful elbows, but no one sees her when they flip through the channels on tv. _ That’s _ what no one wants from Richie- to do all the in between shit, like watch tv and battle laundry stains and plan presents for nephews.

“I’m just not the sort of guy that anyone wants to be around full time,” Richie shrugs. “You like me, and you can only stand to see me like, three days a year, max.”

“That’s not true-”

Richie pulls a face and wobbles his lip. “Y-you d-don’t like-”

“Oh, shuttup,” Bridget snaps. “You’re capable of having relationships. You had all those little buddies when we were kids! Remember the one who broke his arm? He practically lived with us.”

“Who?”

Bridget waves a hand. “Oh, I dunno. I saw a picture when I was scanning old photos.”

Richie had looked at all the stuff Bridget put on Facebook, but he hadn’t seen any friends with broken arms. Maybe she didn’t post it if she didn’t know who to tag. It’s not like Richie can place him either. “Can I see?”

“Well, I don’t have it _ on me_,” Bridget rolls her eyes.

Richie looks at the empty glass in his hand. He’ll probably forget to ask again later.

  
  
-2011-

Usually Richie likes to swing by Bridget’s in December, but this year he’s got a string of jobs that conflict with the school calendar and Bridget’s days with Simon, which is like, the whole point of Christmas. Instead he comes out to Connecticut a couple days ahead of Turkey Time so they can hit the aquarium and the seaport and anything else that delights a ten year old boy. And now, like all of Richie’s least favorite works of Shakespeare, _ he's _ the weird uncle displacing his nephew. He is as respectful as he can possibly be of the legos that litter Simon's room, but he does accidentally crush a castle in the dark on the way to the bathroom and it hurts like a motherfucker. Karma for the time the beloved X-wing that hung from his ceiling got stuck in Uncle Gerry's toupee, no doubt.

The whole experience makes him wonder idly, if Dad and Uncle Gerry used to kick it in the bathtub, once upon a time. Either way, it’s some circle of life bullshit that makes Richie feel fucking ancient. Though not quite as ancient as when, in the absence of Matt, Dad, and even Robert- Bridget asks _ Richie _ to spatchcock the turkey ‘as the patriarch’. Showing remarkable restraint, he does not run screaming into the night. He pops the half a Xanax he didn’t wind up using on the plane, pulls up a YouTube on his phone, and manages to drop only the gizzards on the floor. Watch out, Gallagher.

After dinner, Richie piles silverware and plates in stacks and has Simon bus them to Bridget at the dishwasher. It's kind of like an out of body experience, watching the little dude come and go in his Iron Man t-shirt. The nose is all wrong, but Simon’s coloring is like him and Bridget, built on all the same gawky angles. His glasses are mercifully smaller than ten year old Richie’s had been, though, and he doesn’t seem as bothered by them- the Harry Potter craze had really done the confidence of four eyed boys a favor since his day.

“Hey Simon Says.” Bridget takes the last handful of dishes and slots them into the wash rack. “You wanna look up some movie times?” She shoots Richie a wink over her son’s head.

“Yeah!”

She threatens to ruffle his hair with his soapy hands, which he skillfully dodges. “At Marquee, please. Nothing that’s gonna give you nightmares.”

Richie groans. “Aww, Ma! That rules out The Muppets!”

Simon looks up at him pleadingly. “Oh no!”

“He’s pulling your leg, honey.” Bridget towels off so she can get her phone out of her pants pocket and hand it to Simon.

Simon looks up from unlocking the screen suspiciously. “Is this that ‘reverse psychology’ you were talking about?”

“Yep.”

They pile into Bridget’s SUV shortly thereafter, with Richie smugly riding shotgun having got his way. He drums his knuckles against the icy window as they speed away into an old memory he can't quite get a hold of. Something about initials? When Bridget cuts someone off on the Chester Bowles Highway, he puts it to a rhythm.

“She drives like crazy!” he sings. “Woah-oh! She’ll break our neh-hecks! Oh, she drives like crazy, she always gets into wre-heh-hecks!”

There’s a giggle in the backseat. “Why isn’t _ this _ Uncle Richie’s show?”

Richie whips around in his seat to look at both Simon and Bridget and make sure they haven’t been replaced by aliens. “Why isn’t- ? _ This is Weird Al’s act_, that’s why! Jesus Christ, Bridget! What are you teaching this kid?!”

“How lucky he is to be an only child.” Bridget’s smirk flashes in the rearview mirror.

There might be cartoon steam coming out of Richie’s ears but at least he knows what to get Simon for Christmas.

-2013-

“I could still ask him not to come,” Bridget says. Richie can hear her grimace over the phone.

“You’re kinda down to the wire over there, Bridge. You already shipped him down to North fucking Carolina.”

“He could stay at the hotel! It’s a big decision!” she says, justifying herself. “There’s so much pressure on the holidays. You introduce a date and all night long, you _ know _ Mom is sitting there, just bracing herself for an engagement.”

“God, I love being exempt from that.” The push for marriage equality was clearly a plot by PFLAG moms to have more nuptials to meddle with. Pass. Besides, then he’d actually have to come out and rework his whole act, which, _ haha_. No. Not for anyone less than Anderson Cooper.

“-But I haaaate going stag with Mom and Robert,” Bridget whines. “You sure you can’t play hookie and fly out here?”

Richie could almost take pity on her, but his agent, the crunchiest, granola-est, most pacifistic soul ever to walk this earth will actually hunt him down with a crossbow if he cancelled on a tableread with Apatow. “It’s so fucking sad to bring your brother to prom, you know that, right?”

“I can’t bring Jack. I’m texting him right now.”

“So you’re just gonna keep sneaking around with him through Christmas? Can’t wait for Simon to write the hit sequel, _ I Saw Mommy Blowing Santa Claus_.”

“I wish you were never born, bye!”

“Love you too!”

  
  
-2016-

_Nothing _ is all Richie can feel, all night. It’s all he tastes when he robotically eats the meal Bill slaved over. It’s all he hears when Ben and Bev share private, loveydovey laughs with each other across the table. It’s what he says when Mike tries to loosen him up, as Richie’s counterpart for the night while their host rushes in and out of the kitchen. Like a butter knife accidentally sorted in with the steak knives, he can feel the resistance in his every move- that he’s being dull and frustrating and he doesn’t _ belong _ here. Not when he knows nothing is all Eddie can feel, still wasting away in a hospital somewhere in New York, where they transferred him to get him closer to a home he didn’t belong to either.

He remembers now, the color his house in Derry used to be painted, because it matched Eddie’s shirt the time he walked Richie home after Bowers kicked his ass, even though it made him late for an allergist’s appointment. It was Eddie he was always climbing out of windows to see, and playing his jokes off of, and protecting, and loving _ so hard _ it made him write what in retrospect was embarrassingly transparent poetry in AP English. And he fucking _ forgot _ him.

If Eddie can't be here- he _ should _ be with Eddie. The trouble is, there are some things even Richie can’t fast talk his way into.

Around 8 PM he makes his excuses, lets everyone hug him goodbye while he stands there like a rag doll. He forgets the bottle of bourbon from Mike, and the envelope with some tickets to a concert Bev and Ben gave him, because they like him and think about him when he's not there. There are finally people who would love to be around him all the time and he just ditched them across town to come have a pity party in the bathtub. What a fucking loser.

Richie sighs as he lowers himself into the basin. He supposes that now he knows why keeping it immaculately clean always felt like more like a devotional act than a chore.

Maybe seeing everyone else again for the first time since Derry was always going to be an ordeal. It had only been two and a half months, he reminds himself, and trauma takes time to get over. When he got clipped by a car while living in New York, it took him six months to stop freaking out every time he saw the scuffed knees of the jeans he’d been wearing. What had happened in Derry was equivalent to a whole Gap’s worth of pants, at least.

_ Just get new jeans, idiot, _scoffs the recently resurfaced Eddie that quips at him from the back of his brain.

Well, he’d been too broke for that at the time! And now, he can’t just dig through a pile of 32x30 bootcuts and get a new _ love of his fucking life _ if Eddie doesn’t patch up.

If.

It’s the not knowing that’s killing him, and that state of mind bullshit seems to be what all this hinges on. They believed they could defeat It, so they did. He believed Eddie couldn’t possibly be dead, not now when he just got him back- so he wasn’t.

So what’s the next step? He could try to believe that Eddie will be perfectly okay- but if he’s honest with himself what he wants is _ better _ than perfect. By definition impossible! Richie doesn't just want him to recover, he wants Eddie to be as in love with him as he’s always been with Eddie. That’s just too much of a stretch. Even for a boy raised on space wizards and parallel dimensions and time traveling cars.

When his phone rings, Richie is sure it’s the Losers, following up on him.

“Hey I- I can call later if you’re still partying it up with your crew.”

He’s never been so glad to hear Bridget’s voice. “My _ ‘crew’_?”

“Would you prefer ‘homies’?” Bridget sounds like she’s in a small, quiet room too. If he puts his phone on speaker he could imagine she’s sitting on the floor, just out of sight.

Richie sighs and sinks deeper into the tub until its curves cradle his shoulders. There. Just like old times. “I don’t care. I left.”

“...You okay, Ridge?” 

His nose prickles. The way he feels, if he gets going on the waterworks it’s gonna be a fucking doozy. At least the tub is built for getting soaked. 

“Not really. Just. Talk to me about your shit. Please and thank you.”

Bridget pauses. “If you need-”

“_I said please_,” Richie croaks. He folds his arms in on himself, tight.

“Okay... Well it’s been... very quiet here, with Simon staying at school over the break,” Bridget starts. “I knew the whole Empty Nest thing was gonna be hard. I tried pretending he was already at college over the summer whenever he was with Matt, and that went okay. But like? I don’t know. In September, right after he left, it was like the floodgates opened.”

Richie’s eyes had begun to close as he listened, but they spring open. “In September?”

“Yeah. I remembered what it was like when I left Derry. I thought I was going to come home all the time, see Mom and Dad and yell at you for messing up my room and then... I didn’t,” Bridget admits. Richie can hear the pause where an unspoken ‘sorry’ echoes. “I didn’t really come back until Dad died and I had to clear out my stuff so Mom could move. And even then, I could have thrown it all in a dumpster and I don’t think I would have missed it. Is that- is that what it’ll be like for Simon? It’s all I can think about.”

How can he explain the curse to her without really getting into it? Or getting committed to a mental hospital- blood relatives have that power, right? They never talked about Georgie or any of the rest of them when it had all happened. She might have asked him what was up with his hand after the Losers made their pact, but other than that- there’s no evidence, no basis for her to understand. Maybe everything would have been different if he’d thought to ask her for help, back then... Maybe then-

No. _ Stop_. He can’t blame her or himself for any of it.

“It's not your fault, Bridge. If he comes back all the time, if he doesn’t... It’s his choice and Simon’s his own fucking person. Isn’t that the goal of being a parent?” he asks. “Congratulations.”

Bridget considers this. She hmms. It almost seems to be enough, but she still wonders. “Maybe Derry was just too small a town for us. You hated it.”

A burning feeling ignites in Richie’s chest. He gave everything he had to fight for Derry _ twice_. “I didn’t hate it,” Richie says. “It was just... scary. Don’t make home scary and I think you’ll be fine.”

“I think I get what you’re saying.” Bridget says slowly.

“Really? Because I’ll be honest, I am a fucking mess right now.”

“Yeah,” says Bridget. “I appreciate the advice _ not _ to turn my home into a Haunted House."

"Staffing would be a nightmare, and all those sound effects? Forget it.” Richie snorts. “It’s impossible to get a good night's rest to Monster Mash."

Bridget laughs too. It relaxes him to know he’s done his job, the way pleasing an audience always does. He doesn’t mind so much when she tries him again.

“So, how was your Friendsgiving? Better than listening to Robert talk about stocks, at least?”

“Oh, _ trust_. There was some boring adult shop talk at Bill’s, too.” It had been distantly amusing, all these irresponsible little twerps grown up from playing in the clubhouse to flipping properties and buying insurance. He could still remember having to lend Ben a tie for picture day, and now the guy was talking yachts. “It was fine. There’s been- There was some rough stuff with the group, this year. Maybe there wasn’t enough distance yet, I dunno.”

“There’s always next year,” Bridget reminds him.

Richie squirms. He can hardly think that far ahead. “I’d rather hang with you and Simon if it’s gonna be more of the same with my friends.”

“Crazy idea,” says Bridget. “_You _ host next year. Invite your friends. I’ll come. And Simon will be more interested in checking out California than going to Old Mystic for the gazillionth time.”

“Yeah, once you hit the age where you’ve gotta watch your fudge intake, it really does lose its appeal.” Richie can never get enough of sandbagging Connecticut.

“Is that- thatta ‘yes’?” Bridget yawns.

“I’ll think about it,” says Richie, but he already knows he’ll at least have her and Simon over. He’ll see how the rest pans out. “It is like, 1 o’clock there? Go to sleep, dude.”

“Are you gonna be okay if I let you go?”

Richie thinks for a minute. “I have to believe I will be.”

  
  
-2017-

He would have gone to pick Bridget up from the airport, but seeing as it’s his first time hosting, his hair is proverbially on fire at the moment. Since Simon is coming in from Michigan about two hours behind her, he may as well just send them each a Lyft and get over it.

When the doorbell rings and the Losers are already present and accounted for, he knows he can trust them to let her in while he switches the casseroles.

“Wow, B-Bridget Tozier,” he hears Bill say, a room away. “Long time no see! Bill!”

“Bill! Shit, you’re like, a crazy famous writer now,” Bridget realizes.

Bill laughs it off. “Do you remember Mike?”

“Hello! Happy Thanksgiving, Bridget.”

“Jesus Christ. You’re like an ad for shower gel. Great to see you again, Mike.”

A smack of lips on cheeks. “Beverly, hi! You look incredible. And check this one out...”

After that the excitement and cross talk gets drowned out by one of Richie's timers going off. He's fanning the fog off his glasses with an oven mitt when Bridget erupts into the kitchen and tackles him with a hug.

“Open stove! Fuck!”

“I can’t believe this is the first time I’m coming to _ your _ house that _ you _ own,” she says, squeezing him tight. “Like a grown up! When did my little brother get so old?”

“If I had to pinpoint it... I'd say it was when people started saying ‘on fleek’. My AARP card came the next day. That’s why I couldn’t pick you up, they won’t let me drive after dusk anymore.” Richie pulls back and really looks at her. She’s still New England pale and looking more like Mom every time they get together. “It’s good, if _ super fucking surreal _ to see you here.”

Bridget grins. “Speaking of looking good, when did all your dorky little hometown friends get so hot and famous?”

“It’s sickening isn’t it? And I’m this,” he twirls a finger at his own face, complete with crows feet and a hairline that isn’t putting on airs anymore.

“Hey, can I use your powder room? Long flight. Once I landed I just wanted to get here.”

“Powder room?” Richie scoffs. He strokes his chin. “I don’t think we have one of those...”

“The shitter then,” she punches his arm.

He points to a door just down the hall. “Mi casa es su casa.”

Bridget reappears moments later, shrugging off her jacket and making herself comfortable by dumping it in a chair. She peers into the oven with Richie as he finally checks the turkey’s temperature.

“Why’s there a framed showercap in the bathroom?”

“Hmm?” Richie’s distracted that his bird is a little shy of cooked at only 160°, which will not cut the mustard for _ this _ household. “Eddie said it didn’t go with the decor in the living room, I don’t know.”

Bridget does an exagerated _ Excuse the fuck outta me gesture_. “What, is he a celebrity interior designer now like all your other fabulous friends?”

“He lives here? With me? So he gets a say?” Did he completely blank on filling in Bridget about this? He wipes off the pointy end of the thermometer nervously.

“HOLD UP!” Bridget shouts. “Are you shacking up with sexy Mr. Pecan Pie!?”

Speak of the devil and he will appear, Eddie chooses this moment to drift into the kitchen and triple check that Richie is cooking everything to USDA recommendations. It should be annoying. It's not. He's still floored everytime he turns a corner and sees Eddie, here with him, where he can kiss him whenever he likes, and ruin his Netflix preferences, and watch him make adorable grumpy faces and pat his pockets like a grandpa to make sure he has his keys before leaving the house. How can he mind when he gets to come home after a gig, do a frankly offensive Ricky Ricardo impression, then stretch out on top of Eddie on the couch?

“You rang?” he says in a dropped voice, sideeyeing Bridget. “What’s the temperature?” He plucks the thermometer out of Richie’s hand and opens the oven for himself, not waiting for an answer.

Bridget mimes opening a tiny box and sliding a ring on her finger behind his back at Richie, her mouth open in a maniacal grin. “Ehh?”

“You’re worse than Mom.”  
  
  
  
-2018-

In Bridget’s kitchen, Richie watches Eddie swirl a little peak of whipped cream on to the last of the pies.

“Okay, _ now _ can we do whip-its?” he asks, reaching for the can.

Eddie pulls it away. “That’s fucking ridiculous, I _ know _ you put poppers in my checked bag, which are at least amyl nitrite, not nitrous oxide, or do I have to explain the difference to your pea brain again?”

“I know the difference. But I can’t lick poppers off your-”

Bridget walks in with a half empty bowl of potatoes so that she can clear space on the table for dessert. “Nope!” she declares. “I am too related to you for you to finish that sentence in my presence.”

“Bridge, do whip-its with me in the bathtub!”

“I would, but Simon’s already in there with Robert’s grandkids.”

Richie narrows his eyes. “...Those motherfuckers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Check out next "chapter" for some art from the fic!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now, with Art!

art also on tumblr @stitchyarts

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @stitchyarts on twitter and tumblr, where I have been posting some reddie art sooooo. Check that out ;)


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